The GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning ancestral research in Britain, Ireland, and their diasporas, from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit The GENES Blog if you do so. To contact me please email chrismpaton @ outlook.com.

The following description of the Military Service Pension Collection is taken from my new book, A Decade of Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923:

This vast collection contains supporting documentation for those making pension claims off the Irish government for any military service offered between the Easter Rising and September 1924. The recipients included members of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the IRA, Cumann na mBan, Fianna Éireann, the Hibernian Army and the National Army, as well as other participants, such as members of the Connaught Rangers who mutinied in India in 1920 in protest at the imposition of martial law in Ireland.Various Army Service Pensions Acts were passed by the Dáil in 1923, 1927 and 1932, dealing with wounded service personnel and deceased participants’ dependants. The latter act significantly extended the pension provision to those who had fought for independence prior to 1921, but who had either ceased serving at that point or switched to the Anti-Treaty side. Separate Military Service Pension Acts were also passed in 1924 and 1934 for surviving claimants who had seen active service. A subsequent Act in 1949 allowed for reviews of cases previously rejected under the earlier Acts.

This section of the website also contains a vast amount of material from 1921 to 1923, including IRA nominal rolls (arranged by division), Cumann na mBan (arranged by County), and Fianna Éireann (by county).

The 1922 National Army census was recorded in November 1922 in order that the new Free State could work out how many soldiers it essentially had to pay.

Both collections are available to search for free via www.militaryarchives.ie, to which searches from Ancestry will redirect.